Street Fight Daily: MaxPoint’s Shaky IPO, Square Eyes Small Business

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

Ad Tech’s Rough Ride on Wall Street Continues With Latest IPO (AdAge)
The first ad-tech IPO since July 2014 showed why companies in the category have shied away from Wall Street. MaxPoint Interactive, a marketing automation company that helps brands target neighborhoods via zip codes, went public today and watched its stock drop more than 15% by the time the market closed.

Apple Makes Quiet Gains in Local Mapping (Street Fight)
Michael Boland: In the heat of Mapgate a few years ago, everyone seemed to miss the fact that Apple Maps is actually pretty slick mapping tool — it just lacks the requisite place and navigation data. That’s where it is now — quietly picking up the pieces with data partners and a blitz of mapping acquisitions.

Payment Start-Up Square Expands Its Reach Into Small Businesses (New York Times)
The six-year-old payments start-up began by offering small, square-shaped credit card readers that plug into smartphones or tablets. But on Monday, the company will introduce two services — instant deposits and protection for disputed purchases — that Square says will make life easier for small businesses.

LION’s New Leader Spells Out His Action Plan for ‘Indies’ (Street Fight)
Matt DeRienzo brings strong editorial and publishing experience to his new job as interim executive director of the Local Independent Online News (LION) publishers’ association. In this interview, DeRienzo charts three-and-a-half-year-old LION’s direction under his leadership.

Eddy Cue: Here’s how Apple Pay works on an Apple Watch (CNet)
The exec in charge of Apple Pay tells says that the mobile payments service will work on the company’s new smartwatch as long as the device has been unlocked with a passcode or through an iPhone. Apple Watch has an NFC chip that makes mobile payments possible, but the watch itself doesn’t have TouchID.

Small Businesses Expect Big Success in 2015 (eMarketer)
Small-business owners in the US are feeling pretty positive, as 72% polled by the National Small Business Associationsaid they were somewhat or very confident in the financial future of their companies. They intended to turn to advertising, marketing and digital expansion to fuel growth over the coming year.

Sephora Gets a High-Tech Makeover (USA Today)
Inside an unmarked warehouse in San Francisco’s Dogpatch district, beauty retailer Sephora has created an exact replica of its chain cosmetic store. It’s a place where the company is mixing makeup with digital concepts — hoping to give the already 60 billion dollar a year cosmetics industry a huge high tech makeover.

Incentivized Check-ins: A “White-Hat” Trick For Getting More Reviews On Yelp (Marketing Land)
Yelp’s influence and footprint are substantial and growing. The company now feeds content and reviews to Apple Maps, Bing, Yahoo and elsewhere. However Yelp’s strict “no review solicitation” policy has left many marketers and local business owners frustrated and even angry.

Who Spewed That Abuse? Anonymous Yik Yak App Isn’t Telling (New York Times)
In much the same way that Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America’s college students a decade ago, Yik Yak is now taking their smartphones by storm. Its enormous popularity on campuses has made it the most frequently downloaded anonymous social app in Apple’s App Store.

Paypal’s Schulman Lays Out Plan To Rule The Digital Commerce World (Finextra)
“Our vision for PayPal is to be the world’s leading open digital payments platform, said new PayPal CEO Dan Schulman. “We want to allow the ecosystem to build on top of our platform capabilities, any technology they wish, any payment form that they wish, reward, offers, loyalty, all of that on top of our platform.”

Same-Day Delivery Startup Deliv Snags Former eBay Product Exec (Recode)
Kenny Pate, a long-time product executive at eBay, has joined same-day delivery startup Deliv as its chief product officer. Deliv, which has raised more than $12 million, runs a crowdsourced network of delivery people who handle same-day deliveries for brick-and-mortar stores.